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U5 won’t arrive until 2026, U2 won’t arrive until 2028. The city wants to communicate costs differently in the future.
Vienna. U2 / U5 expansion delayed. And the project will also be significantly more expensive than the figures that have been rumored so far: in concrete terms, around 2.1 billion euros are now assumed for the first phase of the project. An overview.
Schedule
2023. This year was mentioned as the start of operations in 2014 when the then Councilor for Finance for the City of Vienna, Renate Brauner (SPÖ), announced the construction of the U2 / U5 intersection. An optimistic plan that has since been delayed in several steps. On Thursday, the city of Vienna and Wiener Linien announced at a press conference that the U5 should go into operation in the first stage of expansion from Karlsplatz to Frankhplatz in 2026. The U2 extended to Matzleinsdorfer Platz, in turn, should enter operation in 2028, as now Finance Councilor Peter Hanke (SPÖ) announced on Thursday. Those responsible for the delay of the major project were, among other things, new tenders for individual construction lots because, according to the CEO of Wiener Linien, Günter Steinbauer, there were “unacceptable offers” from the construction companies. Here the tender was repeated and a different procedure was used. In the end, according to Steinbauer, this will save around € 200 million compared to projections two years ago.
The costs
One billion euros. This sum was named by the then Councilor for the Treasury, Renate Brauner, in the presentation of the 2014 project. The current Councilor for the Treasury, Peter Hanke, finally announced this Thursday that the costs would be 2,100 million euros. And he used the presentation right away to announce a system change in naming sums for large planned projects. In the future, the focus will be more on costs at the start of construction. So that there is no longer a discrepancy like the previous one. And in defense of why costs were rumored to be significantly higher than in the beginning, the press conference was offered to TU construction economics professor Andreas Kropik, who spoke of a “cost diversion funnel”. “Knowledge of the project increases with increasing planning status.” And it should always be added that the price level at the beginning of the project is simply different. After all, at the start of the project, the city “miscommunicated” that there was still “great cost uncertainty”.
Construction works
Preliminary work has already been done in recent months, but the actual start of construction has now been announced for January 11; specifically, work will start here in the town hall area and the later U5 terminal at Frankhplatz. This is also the site that will have the greatest impact on surface traffic. There will be detours at Landesgerichtsstraße, Alser Straße and Universitätsstraße (see graphic). And from the end of May 2021, the U2 line between Schottentor and Karlsplatz will be suspended for approximately 26 months; this will be offset by existing circular tram lines and an additional U2Z tram line running between Schottenring and Karlsplatz. During this time, the above U2 route will be converted for fully automatic, i.e. driverless operation. And starting in 2026, the U5 will finally be on its way.
